McClatchy-Tribune News Service |
December 28, 2012

PASADENA, Calif. - Actress Brooke D'Orsay bent over backward to land her first role - literally. From the age of 5 until she was 17, she was a gymnast. And when the part called for a woman who could execute back flips, she was the obvious choice. "It was a commercial on a huge campaign to save Canada's biggest department store," says the native Canadian over a Cobb salad at a hotel restaurant here.

"It was a 10-minute commercial with dancers and gymnasts and all these things. I was a gymnast, so I got my union card because I could do a back flip. That was very fortunate; all my training served me well," she says.

D'Orsay is best known to audiences as the luminous fiancee/now wife of the concierge doctor's deal-making brother in USA's "Royal Pains."

Before "Royal Pains" she played the model whose body is taken over by the chubby lawyer on "Drop Dead Diva" and co-starred in shows like "Gary Unmarried," "6Teen" and "Happy Hour."

Despite her 12-year involvement, she insists she dislikes the competitive aspect of gymnastics. "That's the part I liked the least about it. I liked being part of a group. My girlfriends - every day we would meet after school and train together. It was always such a bummer when we'd go into competition and have to compete against each other," she says.

"I didn't like being pushed and yelled at by coaches to try to get you to a certain place. I was like, 'Are we having fun here?' It was confusing to me that there was that element of aggression and push behind it, so that part of it wasn't for me."

But when it came to acting it was a whole different story. D'Orsay, 30, likes to call it "being focused." She explains her continental shift from Canadian commercials to co-starring parts on American series this way: "I came out here without a net or social community. For some reason there was this force that kept pushing. Now I look back and I can't believe I did it. To go through those years again I wouldn't want to do it, but at the time, I felt like I HAD to. I just knew there was something else there that I was trying to get to."

Her parents had separated when she was 10, and her mom moved to San Francisco. D'Orsay's father stayed in Canada raising Brooke and her older brother.

Once she decided on acting, she was unstoppable. "I've always been somebody that wanted to actually have the experience rather than sit in a classroom. I said, 'I'm going to get hands-on experience' so I started submitting myself for nonpaying jobs like student films - anything where I could build a résumé."

Along the way she sold glow sticks at theme parts, hawked knives and gym memberships and even taught aerobics. But nothing stuck distracted her from acting.

When she submitted her résumé at a film school in Toronto, she was offered a job teaching there instead. She did that for a year - all the while poring over acting and theater books to keep ahead of the class.

Eventually casting directors in Toronto urged her to try her luck in L.A. Taking off with her dad in his Ford Focus, D'Orsay was on her way to Los Angeles where she had already secured a manager.

"As soon as I arrived, my manager had all these meetings set up for agents. So I had a system in place. And I did know some people from the American jobs in Canada. I knew a handful of people and had my manager and advice from casting directors in Toronto. I felt I had enough reason to go. But I was doing well in Toronto and to stop that momentum and move out here and have to build that snowball all over again was daunting and scary."

She tried out for 10 pilots; three were picked up and eventually canceled. When she read the script for "Royal Pains," she was elated but cautious. "I really, really wanted to end up on the show. So I made that my focus. And I kept going after what I want and kept saying it to myself. And that's what happened."

She maintains two homes - one in New York, where the show is filmed, and one in L.A., where she spends six months of the year. Her sweetheart, writer-director Greg Coolidge, keeps in touch when she's filming via daily emails.

"We have to make time and make it work," she says. "Just knowing at the end of it I have six months off and also knowing I'm living in the two greatest cities in the country, just keeping that in the forefront. … It isn't going to last forever, and I need to enjoy it."